Reunion

During the family reunion, we had a night where Grandma and Grandpa shared memories.  The audio isn't that great for these videos, but it's what I've got.  Enjoy! (These videos can also be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/80giffordjamie)

Opening The Gift

First Date

Glory's Childhood

Worst Job

Tom's Story

Pinegum (Sorry about the bouncy video)

BB Gun

BB Gun

Captain Amazing

The Bubble

Dippidy Do

Honeymoons

Stranger Danger

Learn how to do it yourself...

Close the door.

Temple

Trying to update this thing is worse than trying to keep up with my journal...

Here's the latest HDR photo of the temple. Orrin and I took it last night on our Daddy Date Night.  I hadn't gotten out my new tripod since I got it for Christmas and so last night was the perfect opportunity to play with it.  Only, when we got to the temple, I found out that I'd misplaced my quick-connect for the tripod and I can't connect my camera to it now, so I had to still do it by hand...  Still though, I thouht this turned out really nice.  Hope you enjoy!

Main Living Area

New House

OK, OK, I know, I know. We're really bad at keeping everyone informed about what's going on in our lives. I'll make you a deal. You get over it and I promise not to do any better.

In case you didn't know already know it, we moved again! But it's the last time in a long time - I promise! Not only did we move, but we moved because we decided to stay in Rexburg, and since we're staying, there's no point in paying for someone else's mortgage; we bought a house Yep, after lots and lots of prayer and pondering, we finally decided to turn down my job offers with USAA in San Antonio, and my job offer with Boeing in Washington, and to stay at the hospital. And since making that decision, the Lord has opened so many doors - including purchasing this house! Here's how the move went:

Thursday, 6pm: Josh gets off work and goes over to the new house. Jamie comes over with some (only about 30,000 or so) Relief Society sisters and they all start cleaning and getting ready to paint.

Thursday, 7pm: The house is spick-and-span (I wonder where that phrase originated anyway), and Josh, Jamie and Greg (a close family friend) started to tape and paint.

Thursday, 10pm: Greg wusses out and goes home.

Friday, 2am: Josh and Jamie get to a good stopping point and go home to get some sleep.

Friday, 7am: The kids wake mama-bear and papa-bear up. They (the kids) get taken to school and Josh and Jamie go back to the new house to paint.

Saturday, 1am: Josh wusses out and goes home.

Saturday, 230am: Jamie decided to stop and meets Josh at home.

Saturday, 3am: Josh and Jamie (after tossing and turning) finally fall asleep after their muscles decide to quit complaining about all the weird angles they been forced into while painting the ceiling.

Saturday, 745am: Josh and Jamie awake to a text message that only 2 people have signed up to help them move all their stuff to the new house. Josh goes to pick up the U-Haul.

Saturday, 9am: Josh rounds up a couple of friends and they start the first truck-load. A couple people are assigned to finish the painting at the new house.

Saturday, 1130am: Josh and company take the first truck over to the new house.

Saturday, 1220pm: The first truck is unloaded.

Saturday, 1245pm: This is the assigned time for the 2 people who signed up to actually show up. Nothing.

Saturday, 1pm: An army of about 500 shows up to help move. It was actually about 25 people, but it was a lot! I can't tell you how relieved we were to have more than 2 people to help us!

Saturday, 245pm: 3 more truck-loads have been loaded, taken to the new house, and unloaded. Everything is now at the new house.

Saturday, 345pm: The old house has its preliminary cleaning, including behind the fridge. Jamie leaves to fill her calling as den leader and help out at the Blue and Gold Banquet.

Saturday, 7pm: Blue and Gold is over and Josh and Jamie go to dinner with friends to help relax after such an exhausting weekend.

Saturday, 1130pm: Josh and Jamie get back from dinner and start unpacking.

Sunday, 1230am: Josh goes to bed.

Sunday, 3am: Jamie finally goes to bed.

Sunday, 9am: More unpacking (Where are all the church clothes? Do we have any clean towels? What about body-wash and shampoo? You get the picture). The ox is in the mire at this point.

Sunday, 1:30pm: Finally found the shower stuff and get ready for church.

Sunday, 2pm: Showers are done, Josh and the boys leave for church (1/2 hour late). Jamie collapses (figuratively).

Sunday, 430pm: Josh and the boys get back from church, and the boys get to watch a movie. Josh goes to do home-teaching. Jamie goes to clean the old house.

Sunday, 7pm: Josh and Hunter join Jamie to clean and patch walls and paint and all that good stuff. They discover the value of wall texture in a bottle (only its weight in gold!).

Sunday, midnight: They go home and all go to bed.

Monday, 7am: Boys up for school, Josh and Jamie go over to the old house to finish cleaning and repairs.

Monday, 9am: Josh goes to work.

Monday, 430pm: Josh comes home and gets help from his friend to take a bunch of junk to the dump.

Monday, 1030pm: Repairs are all done, Josh and Jamie to the new house to relax.

Whew! And now we just have to unpack and re-organize! I'll put up some more pictures later, but here are some pictures of the main living area - before and after.

Before:

After:

And it's even messier now that all our stuff is here! So, in a week or two (once we've had time to organize and clean and vacuum a little) we'll take some more pictures and post again.

Cute Puppies

Harry and the Giffords

Busy Week

Man! It has been a busy week!

First, Mom and the girls came up for "Girls' Weekend" and the craft fair on Saturday. We had a lot of fun, played some silly karaoke game, and ate some good food. The craft fair itself I thought was a bit lacking and generally disappointing, but it was fun to spend time with family.

Next, Tinkerbell had her puppies! She had 7 puppies on Saturday (during the craft fair), but then some complications and there was a still birth on Monday. We took her to the vet and he had to take her uterus. Sad day. She's been on medicine ever since and we're having to feed the puppies once a day to supplement until she's feeling better and producing more milk.

Then, on Tuesday, Jamie had surgery on her nose and had her gallbladder taken out. She's of course been very miserable... It's day 3, her worse day so far, but it's often the worst day for nose surgeries. Hopefully she'll be feeling better tomorrow.

We had what the experts are calling the worst storm in 20 years from Friday thru Tuesday, and we got a total of about a foot of snow here in Rexburg. Temperatures dropped after that (with a high of 5 on Wednesday) and it's been cold ever since. Way too early for this kind of winter weather. If it were January or February I wouldn't murmur so much, but it's November!

On Thursday of course was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving without a mother to prepare the food. Carrie didn't want to touch the nasty turkey and deal with the innards, so we struck up a deal. I (Josh) did the turkey and she did the rest. Of course, I did do a couple of pies. And by "did" I mean buy. But everything turned out great, and nobody complained about the food, so I think it was a success. Even if they didn't eat as much as when Jamie cooks it all. It was so cold though (-7 when we woke up) so we had to break tradition and didn't get to go shooting in the morning. Oh well. There's always next year.

And finally, Carrie just got her mission call! Oh happy day! I'm not at liberty to tell you where she's going, but make sure and give her a call for the details...

PS - I just realized I have been so busy that I haven't taken any pictures of these events! Stay tuned - I'll take some and then do a new post in a couple of days.

Hunter's B-Day

Birthdays on a budget mean that you have to find ... creative things to do. This year we had some wood left over and our neighbors just finished building a deck, so they had some wood left over. Result? Hunter gets a bonfire for his birthday!

More Temple HDR

Fun with the camera

I've been speaking and learning from a guy in my ward who is absolutely amazing with a camera. In fact, he's told me that any time he wants a new toy, he just goes and takes some pictures to pay for it. He taught me about a technique called "light painting". I'm looking for a really cool old barn or something that I can go a do a light painting on, but for now, here's a couple of my experiments.

More HDR

Dance Festival

Hosting a couple of the dancers from the Mexico team during the dance festival was great fun! Here are just a couple of the pictures:

The boys learning how to dance with Fernando-

The Candle Dance -

Some Other Folk Dance -

The great news is that we had a lot of fun and made some great new friends. The bad news, it took way too much money to host for the week, so we won't be making it camping for Labor Day camping. Stay tuned! We'll be posting some more pictures soon.